


The Garden

by plottingalong



Category: Rapunzel (Fairy Tale)
Genre: Fairy Tale Elements, Gardens, Rapunzel Elements, Revisionist Fairy Tale, Witches
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-21
Updated: 2020-07-21
Packaged: 2021-03-05 05:53:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 517
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25419520
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/plottingalong/pseuds/plottingalong
Summary: Trapped inside the garden that once enticed her, Rapunzel's mother is wracked with guilt.
Kudos: 1





	The Garden

The garden was alive, in spite of her efforts. Giant beanstalks, looping in and out of sight, occasionally dropped an enormous bean from the heavens, ensuring she wouldn’t go hungry. Dragonbane, with its spiky flowers that bloomed at the first sight of what passed as spring in her prison. Kelpie grass, long, green strands that waved in the wind grew in between the thick beanstalks. Pumpkins, plain orange, and the most hateful of all- the rapunzel, which grew everywhere, in any crevice, rows and rows of it, and though it was just as mouthwatering now as it had been all those years ago, she’d vowed not to touch a single leaf.  
She’d never watered the garden, not even once in all of the years she’d been stuck in her prison, and yet it grew, bright and lively in spite of the towering brick walls that kept her inside, and all of the world out.  
Sometimes she would curse the garden and the walls, calling them one and the same- the things that kept her here, and would keep her for eternity. Other times, she would find solace in the garden. After all, if she could only ignore the monstrosity and the strangeness of the plants around her, it was still a garden, and gardens were what got her here in the first place.  
The pumpkins were her favorite. The witch hated them, and whenever she came to visit, she would brew pumpkin stew, a rare change from bean lentils. It, at least, stopped her from kicking her captor in the knee. Whenever she’d sip a spoonful, she’d ask.  
“What of my daughter? My husband?”  
The witch would shrug, she’d always shrug before answering anything, her discount pink paisley robes slipping off her slim shoulders.  
“Your husband has become a travelling salesman, he always wanted to be one, you know. He just sold my boy Jack five magic beans for a cow. I wonder how long it’ll take for the boy to realize that magic beans shouldn’t be messed with.”  
“You have a boy, then?” The witch’s captive asked.  
“A silly child, yes, three years younger than yours, I believe.” The witch said, sipping some of the pumpkin soup and wrinkling her face in disgust, “I don’t believe he’ll amount up to anything, to be honest.”  
“And what of my little girl?” The captive pressed.  
“She’s doing fine, still locked up in the tower. Fourteen years old, pretty as anything. Doesn’t miss you at all.”  
The captive always winced when she heard news of her daughter, the daughter that had been replaced with rows and rows of that despised lettuce.  
“Would you be so kind as to let me see her?” She pressed, though she knew what the witch would say.  
“Certainly not. As of now, she is my child. She will stay my child. Now goodbye, I have a daughter to sing a lullaby to.”  
The witch disappeared just as she’d come, and her captive sat, staring at the garden that surrounded her, with all the riches she’d ever wanted, and now only wished they would burn.


End file.
